Student success marks College of Marin's 87th commencement

WHEN LANCE REYES went back to school, he said he was self-conscious about being older than his new classmates. It hit him that he was of a different generation than his classmates when one of them didn't know who basketball legend Magic Johnson was.

But four years after enrolling at College of Marin, and 13 years after graduating from high school, the 30-year-old Reyes is one of 380 students graduating from College of Marin on Friday. Reyes, who was the college's student trustee this year, found out last month that he had been accepted to the University of California at Berkeley, where he will study computer science.

Reyes skirted away from more schooling after high school but then decided he needed a college degree to open himself to more career opportunities. He took a circuitous route to get to this point, but it is a path he does not regret.

"I think that it was meant to be that I wasn't supposed to go straight to college," said Reyes, who lives in Greenbrae.

Reyes, who grew up in Southern California, spent his high school years in Texas. Instead of pursuing college, he spent a couple years working in restaurants and banks, then moved to Hawaii to pursue an electrician apprenticeship.

"I loved it from the start," Reyes said of being an electrician. "I loved the physical part of it. Some days were harder than others, but at the end of the day, you could tangibly see what you did in eight hours of work."

Reyes eventually got the itch to move on from his work as an electrician, and starting thinking of a long-term plan. People around him said that going back to school would render his five years in the electrician apprenticeship as wasted time. But he didn't see it that way.

Living in Hawaii allowed him to experience a different culture, which in turn led him to become more in touch with his heritage, which is half Mexican and half Guatemalan. And it allowed him to become closer with his brother, Jason, who is 10 years his senior and invited him to move to Hawaii.

Those, Reyes said, made his time in Hawaii an invaluable learning experience. And, "I had the confidence and I wanted to do something else," he said.

It was a long process to graduate from COM. Reyes enrolled in spring 2010, juggling class and work, as he paid his way through school. One semester, he said, his routine was to go to work at Trader Joe's at 4 a.m. and not go to be bed until after midnight, when he was finished with schoolwork.

"A good night's sleep was five hours," Reyes said.

It wasn't easy, but Reyes realized that was what he needed to do.

"He realizes he is sacrificing now, but he knows in the long run it will pay off," said Arnulfo Cedillo, director of student services and health center, adding that many COM graduates go a similar route. "Lance is not unique."

While many community college students are straight out of high schools, others are "re-entry" students who may have gone to work right out of high school and then later decided to pursue a college degree.

Reyes said he hopes his journey can serve as inspiration for others who are in a similar situation that he was in and are contemplating whether to go back to school.

"If you're making enough money to be comfortable, it's a difficult decision to come back to school to better yourself or to try to get something so that you can eventually move up and have some sort of social mobility," Reyes said. "The more I've been here, the more I've realized our actions are not to ourselves, the more I've wanted to be a role model to inspire the next generation, to say, 'hey, look, we did it, we understand the struggles, because we had to face them, too.'"

In Reyes' case, he often had to make choices between eating and filling his car with gas, as he waited for a financial aid or paycheck to arrive. And he had to deal with his father passing away last year.

Not that Reyes is looking for any sympathy.

"There are a lot of students that have just as much, if not more, responsibilities," Reyes said. "And they're not looking for any handouts. They want to succeed just as much as anybody else. They want to be able to say, 'I did this on my own,' or 'I did this for myself,' or 'I did this for my family.'"

As of now, Reyes is leaning toward a career in software programming related to Internet security. But he realizes that his time at Berkeley could change that.

"One of the reasons I am so excited about finally getting to my upper level classes is that I'll be able to start seeing all the different directions I'll be able to go into," Reyes said, "the same way as when I started taking engineering classes here, it really opened up my eyes to computer science."

College of Marin's 87th annual commencement exercises will take place at 6 p.m. Friday in the Irwin P. Diamond Physical Education Center Gymnasium, 700 College Ave., Kentfield. The keynote commencement speaker is U.S. Congressman Jared Huffman.